


Unwanted Duality in Life

by valiantblueknight



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Flushed Romance | Matesprits, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Quadrant Confusion, Quadrant Vacillation, Slavery, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-05
Updated: 2015-08-05
Packaged: 2018-04-13 02:56:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4505046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valiantblueknight/pseuds/valiantblueknight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He inspired me to live, so he died.</p><p>She made me want to die, so I lived.</p><p>And every time I truly grew to loathe her, to wish she would never return to torment me, she came in and made me wish she would never leave.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unwanted Duality in Life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anthrop](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anthrop/gifts).



> Helpful links for translation!  
> Binary: http://binarytranslator.com/  
> Hexadecimal: http://www.qbit.it/lab/hextext.php
> 
> The fic is still completely understandable without the translations, so don't feel obliged to do so.

01010011 01011001 01010011 01010100 01000101 01001101 00100000 01001101 01000001 01001100 01000110 01010101 01001110 01000011 01010100 01001001 01001111 01001110

46 55 43 4b 31 4e 47 35 48 31 37 4d 59 50 34 4e 34 43 48 33 35

ERROR FOUND: PROCESSING POWER DEPLETED.

01010000 01010010 01001111 01000010 01001100 01000101 01001101 01010011 00100000 01010111 01001001 01010100 01001000 00100000 01010111 01000101 01010100 01010111 01000001 01010010 01000101 00100000 01000100 01000101 01010100 01000101 01000011 01010100 01000101 01000100

35 48 31 37 57 48 34 37 31 35 35 48 33 44 30 31 4e 47 37 30 4d 33

ERROR FOUND: PSIONIC BACKLASH DETECTED.

01010010 01010101 01001110 01001110 01001001 01001110 01000111 00100000 01000100 01001001 01000001 01000111 01001110 01001111 01010011 01010100 01001001 01000011 01010011

41 4d 49 44 59 49 4e 47 3f

ERROR FOUND: DAMAGE TO HARDWARE.

01001000 01000101 01000001 01001100 01010100 01001000 00100000 01010010 01000001 01010000 01001001 01000100 01001100 01011001 00100000 01000110 01000001 01001100 01001100 01001001 01001110 01000111

34 38 30 55 37 46 55 43 4b 31 4e 47 37 31 4d 33

ERROR FOUND: PRESSURE DEPLETION IN HELMSMAN 22.

01010010 01000101 01000010 01001111 01001111 01010100 01001001 01001110 01000111 00100000 01010011 01011001 01010011 01010100 01000101 01001101 01010011 00100000 01001110 01001111 01010111

* * *

A voice rings out through the ship, invitingly chipper by design. “Welcome to the Battleship Condescension, First of Her Imperious Condescension’s Royal Fleet. I am Helmsman 22, and I will-- HEALTH FALLING RAPIDLY, VITALS AT 69%”

“Helmsman Number 22 has been in service for 612 sweeps, 4 perigrees, 1 week, 3 days, 1 hour, 25 minutes, 4.13 se--HEALTH FALLING RAPIDLY, VITALS AT 42%”

The sound of the chipper voice grates on unused ears, a bother to the wetware of the system, distracting. It shouldn’t be. The mechanical brain should be able to block out the noise. “Attempting diagnostics. Mechanic called to power room for repairs.” Liquid drips from somewhere to somewhere. It takes too much processing power to deal with the overloading sensors to determine just what it is that’s leaking. “Leakage detected. Mechanic called to power room for repairs.”

It takes a long time, seconds realistically, but to a computer that is an eternity, to get past the confusion and jumbled signals, both in the ships processors and the wetware of the system itself, to realize what is happening: I am crying.

“HEALTH FALLING RAPIDLY, VITALS AT 25%”

I am crying hot, sticky tears that pool in the fuchsia pink goggles _she_ put on me, the fluid still managing to seep out to run down cheeks that haven’t been touched in a perigree or more. And it smells like blood.

“VITALS AT 23%”

I have the typical, insane need to stay awake, active, _working_ , a little longer. Just… A little longer. And then I can sleep for the first time in what feels like forever. I can say fuck this shit (ship, part of my pan automatically corrects, with a deep chuckle, deep and cold like the ocean, abrupt like bubbles popping in quick succession), I’m out.

Am I dying?

Fuck, I hope so.

"HEALTH FALLING RAPIDLY, VITALS AT 22%. Reverting to backup power.” My head lolls against my chest (as if it doesn’t normally, fuck making the effort to keep it up, even if it does cause pain in my segmented torso pillar that aches, every part of me aches so it hardly matters) as I will myself to stay awake just long enough to see if any mechanics are coming in my pathetic excuse for a block. But no, as is typical, I am alone.

Finally, as what I am 200% sure is my vibrant yellow hemospill drips down my cheekbones, down to my chin, and onto pink biowire, I pass out. The whole system, the whole half of my fucked up, disgustingly damaged pan devoted to keeping this ship running, goes on autopilot and makes the automated choice of leaving me out of it. I drift. Normally, a troll pan does not get to dreaming near so quickly, but when you become accustomed to the response time of a computer, thoughts fly a lot quicker than normal.

Which is good, considering I have a lot to think about, a lot of dreams that are too far away every time but now. I can feel, dimly, my body weakening. I don’t think anyone is coming to save me this time. If I gave a shit, I’d look up why, considering I have the means. But I don’t care. I’d rather drift, I’d rather spend my last moments thinking, just that little bit faster, of thoughts that fill me with bitter longing, of old, barely unforgotten times, cherished in the memory banks of my wetware, when I was more troll than computer. When I wasn't so alone.

Most nights, now, I only have _her_. If she will have me, that is, if she is not busy destroying worlds with the power she steals from my body. And the few nights she visits me, I have to try my damnedest not to scream out to her not to leave me alone, with only the computer that is my mind and the memories that only pain me more for company and the echos of other helmsmen gone mad.

And sometimes… I fail. Sometimes I plead her to return, to do as she wishes only so long as she stays with me that little bit longer. I am never quite sure if she is surprised when I do or not, when I crack and beg her. Sometimes, she is pleased at my words. Sometimes, she is insulted that I would try to waste her time with something so inconsequential as my feelings, and she leaves. Or worse, she stays, punishes me, slighting me and humoring me at the exact same time.

I loathe her. But she is what keeps me sane, even as she cracks me to tiny fucking pieces with every meeting.

But if I am dying, I don’t want to linger on her. I want to revel in nicer times, when I felt important. When I felt that the game I played with my friends was worth something, that we were going to do something that would change the world.

Well, however bad it went, we did change the world.

Why the fuck is life so ironic, and how do I get it to cut the shit and cut me loose already?

My name is Makena Captor. And I am fucking tired of being a computer.

* * *

 

I remember, somehow _I still remember_ , Keyfah's unnatural red eyes. Many things have left my abused, _damaged_ , think pan, but that and his voice have never left me. The bright eyes that pierce you, understanding and still expecting more, the strong voice that managed to calm, soothe, and in the same breath inspire, and, when it was necessary, enrage. I still remember the first words of his I ever heard, the way it made me feel. How it actually made me feel I was worth something, that there was something worth working towards.Not that they were that special, from an outside perspective. I doubt he thought much of them, certainly never thought of them as the words that gave me life. (Fuck, but I'm getting sentimental in my _way too fucking old_ age.)

“Why are you bound?”

I grunted vaguely, hanging limp, wrists shackled above my head. I could easily free myself from the things, of course, I was certainly powerful enough for that and they hadn’t quite devised ways to block psionic ability without cutting off horns to strip trolls of psychic power completely. But I felt it was pointless at the time. What were the chances, after all, of me not just getting recaptured or culled?

He huffed slightly, sounding annoyed. “Good answer, thanks for the clarification.” The dry tone, words spoken as much to himself as they were to me, made me annoyed, but not enough to actually do anything. I heard footfalls, coming closer to me, and I got even more annoyed. And confused. Here we were, in public, with all the people hurrying around to get about their business and ignore my existence, and he was getting closer. Both weird and pointless, it’s not like he could have helped me. And it’s not like I cared if he did, if he had found some way to undo the shackles then, I probably would have just sat down and chilled for a while until I got chained back up.

“Are you injured?” His tone was curious, but also concerned, and I couldn't help but get more befuddled by his actions as well as his words. What a strange troll, I had to think, who would ask how I am, who would concern himself with my well being, when he could have just as easily moved the fuck along, as so many others had already. I cracked open an eye, curious and confused, but trying to hide it. My gaze started at his shoes and began to go up his legs, clothed in black legging. _Really long_ black leggings. How high did those things go anyway, holy shit, was this his only real clothing?  The only other cloth on him was on his shoulders, a raggedy cloak, which had to mean he was poor as shit.

Finally my eyes got to his chin, his almost childlike face, and my bi-chromial ganderorbs focused on the bright eyes of the guy staring so intently at me. My breath caught in my throat and my gut wrenched at the eerie sight. I blinked a few times in surprise, my thinkpan stuttering, unable to really believe what I was seeing. I was sure it had to be a trick of the admittedly bad light. What the fuck? His eyes were… unnaturally bright, almost disturbingly so, in light of the dual moons, of the torch off to the side. Captivatingly so, one could say. If one were the poetic type, which I have never been. At the time, my vein of thought was more along the line of just how fucking weird it was.

He cleared his throat as I continued to stare in shock. The gesture seemed anxious, as if he were actually a tad nervous to be around me. I couldn’t imagine why, chained as I was, what he was nervous about. What did he have to fear? “Again, are you alright? A definite answer would be appreciated.” I was struck again by this stranger’s want for kindness, which strangely seemed to show even on his face. That isn’t a thing people do. It wasn’t then and it isn’t now. Even still, staring at his intense, unnatural eyes, I couldn’t even question his motives properly.

“ _W-what the f-fuck?_ ” Damnit! I always hated it when I would stutter. I almost managed to tamp it down, most days, but in stress or surprise, it still came out with a vengeance. “… Y-your eyes.” That was the only explanation I could get out for my exclamation of surprise.

He looks like he was expecting essentially that, and looks away for half a moment before looking back. “Ah, yes. My eyes are… Interesting.” I would have said ‘no shit’ if I could have found it in me to be sarcastic. What came out instead, emphatically, was just, “ _How are you still alive?_ ”

His answer was simple, accompanied with a shrug and a vague noise. “I manage.”

And for a few moments, we just stared at each other once again, me slackjawed and wide eyed, making an absolute ass of myself. He seemed to be expecting something, and I wrack my pan for what it could be. … Oh yeah, he asked me something, didn’t he? Something about me being alright or whatever. “Oh! Yeah, I’m t-totally f-fine.” Fucking stutter, I tried to get it a bit under control, but his eyes were so intent, so bright. “I m-mean, I’m t-tied up and e-everything but I’m f-fine.”

He blinked, seeming confused. “Speaking of tied up… Do you want help out of those?” He moved to start undoing the cuffs, or at least see if he could.

I shook my head, annoyed. “Dude, I can get out w-whenever, I d-don’t need your h-help.” His brow furrowed, and it was easier to see, as close as he was. Confused again, that seemed to be his attitude a lot. At least around me.

“... If you can get out, then why haven’t you, yet?” His voice managed to be simultaneously curious, confused, and… A peculiar tightness. Maybe anger, I thought. Why would he be angry? I couldn’t understand at the time, though he had since made it explicitly clear just how furious he was at how...  _Beaten, hopeless_ I was.

I looked away at his words, the anger in it making me… Somehow, ashamed. “The fuck is the point.” My voice was quiet, I’m half surprised he even heard me.

His voice was almost equally quiet, my ears twitching as I strain to hear it a bit. “The point is that every troll should have freedom.” Even with the quiet in it, there’s a hardness behind the words, a certainty I’d never heard before. “And the fact that you do not seem to even think to consider escaping just shows the sorry truth that things are not how they should be.”

“... Y-yeah that sounds nice and all, but it also sounds f-fucking nuts.” I was not good at tact back then. That didn’t improve much over time, except now I can better pick my battles. Sometimes, at least. His eyes narrowed and he glared at me hard, obviously offended. I had to raise my voice in protest at the look. “ _It does!!_ ”

“Which is why I try so hard to survive, even with my mutation. It shouldn't sound insane, it should sound _right_. It should sound just.” He growls a little bit, now more obviously angry, his voice still having that same power, the power that never failed to captivate me in the future, to captivate hundreds. “You have your chance at freedom, why don’t you take it? Do you want help out of this or not?”

I looked at him incredulously. Unbelievable. Absolutely fucking unbelievable. This mutant troll had to be crazy. “I told you already! I already have my own chance at freedom. What I d-don’t have is a reason. It’s p-pointless.”

He growls again, and I was reminded acutely that, mutant or not, he could still technically go for my throat. I could stop him, but he was close enough that he could do some damage before I managed to pull him off with my psi. “... I have a reason. A mutant has a reason to live, to want to thrive. Why don’t you?”

I didn’t have an answer. I felt like I should. The silence stretched between us for long moments and I couldn’t endure meeting his unusual stare for much longer. So, like the coward I was then, the coward I am now, I looked away. “... W-what is your reason?”

“I want to change the world.” I snorted. He glared. I quieted a bit. This seemed… Important, somehow. “Ever since I was young, I had… Dreams. Not dayterrors, or not always at least. I had these dreams about how things could be different, how all colors could be equal. How, instead of gnashing our teeth at each other and going for everyone’s throats, we could help each other instead. Once I got old enough to travel, my lusus and I began to spread the word, that things could be so much _better_ than they are now.”

Well… I had to admire his ambition at least. “... It s-still sounds crazy, you know.”

“Yeah. I know.” And then, without missing a beat. _“Come with me.”_

… Maybe his insanity wasn’t from his mutation. Maybe it was contagious. Because the next words out of my mouth were, “... Okay. I will.”

It would be hard to tell you just what was going through my pan just then. Partially, I was bored. Partially, it felt like he was really… On to something in a way. But… It’s almost laughable, looking back, but the main thing I was thinking as I made the most important decision of my life was, ‘There is no fucking way I’m getting one-upped at life by a fucking mutant.’

* * *

That was the beginning of the happiest time of my life. I met his ‘lusus’ that day, a jade by the name of Zaniah. A few sweeps later we wandered into Nemean’s territory, she almost killed us, and then… Keyfah talked her down, somehow. It took nights, really, for her to be calmed enough to trust us, to not stalk us everywhere we went. But every night, out of nowhere, he’d just start... Talking, as we walked, her keeping out of sight but within hearing range behind or in front or beside us. He would tell us stories, unbelievable stories, about a game, about another world, about _his_ world, the one he dreamed about. By the time we got out the other side of her forest, she wanted to come with us.

And we all guarded him, like he was something sacred. I ended up getting angry at a lot of people a lot of the time, sometimes at the others, sometimes at the fuckers around us who wouldn’t see sense, sometimes at myself, and he’d talk me down from that too.

It broke me, watching his final speech. As little will as I had to live, to do anything, when he met me, I had even less when the arrow plunged into his heart. I expected to be killed, and I had wanted to go down fighting by his side. But by that time, they had figured out how to block and channel psionics, I was as weak as any other yellowblood.

I would have killed for him, I would have died for him. But instead, I had to live without him.

I was one of the first helmsmen. They took me, they broke my body, trimmed off what they didn’t need, stuck ports in my body to better conduct me, stuck a grub in my spine to connect to my thinkpan, and made me a computer. A battery.

I didn’t meet _her_ for another few sweeps after that. They had put me on some random smaller ship, and had eventually discovered that, however boastful I was calling myself _The Psionic_ , it wasn’t any sort of exaggeration to say I was one of the most powerful, that I did truly deserve to be referred to not only as ' _A_ psionic', but ' _The_ '. And as they stole my power away, as they tried to break me down and make me submit, I took everything they threw at me, and still had the energy to snarl and spit. It was because of me that the punishments got coded into the system.

But that came later. Not by much, but a little. First I met the Empress. And she took my face in hers, as if trying to see just what about me was so special, as if trying… To see what he saw, maybe. I still don't know what he saw, if she found what she was looking for. Every instinct in me told me to run away from the highblood, to cower, to try to look as small as possible, submit to her.

I spit in her imperial, self righteous face.

She wiped it off, and it smeared her pink, overly gaudy makeup in the process. I felt grim satisfaction go through me. Maybe she’d kill me after that, at the time I was sure it was what I wanted.

Not an hour later, she had me writhing in pain, some sort of acidic acrid smelling slime dripping down my shoulder. She said it was the saliva of some breed of slitherbeast, said that it was fair, tit for tat.

And then she said, _“Come with me,”_ just like he did. Her voice was low, almost friendly, and I stared at her incredulously, bolts of pain still going through me, the result of something she put on me.

I couldn’t say no, that would get me nowhere. She had taught me over the course of the last hour that she gets what she wants, no matter what. I almost did anyway, in remembrance of him. But… I didn’t. Some part of me was scared of disobeying her, if she did that much for spitting at her, what would she do if I outright denied her?

“... Okay, I will.” As much as I believed it when I was taken and  _changed,_ I wasn't ready to die.

Didn’t I say I was a coward?

* * *

By the time we got from the little ship to her own, the Battleship Condescension, by the time I was once again strapped in as a helmsman, they had programmed in features to make me obey.

I would spit at someone. Or swear. Or sass someone, or use sarcasm, or do anything that smacked of disobedience. And then that same cheerful, electronic voice would sound.

 _“Please stand back! Helmsman is being punished in three… Two… One.”_ And on one, electricity would roll through my body, electricity that had been drawn from me, electricity I should be able to resist and control. It was the worst sort of betrayal. My own power, turned against me.

The first night, I tried to resist anyway, tried to fight. By the time the sun rose, my nerves were raw, thrumming with pain, and I couldn’t sleep, so pumped full of stimulant I couldn’t hardly keep still. Not that I could keep still anyway, my body twitching with spasms from the damage the electricity did to my nerves.

For the next week, I was so upset, so in pain, I obeyed without a fight for the first time since I’d been hooked up. And at the end of the week, _she_ came in, smirking with all her shark teeth showing. “You seem to have gotten the piketure, huh bayb? Ship happens exactly how I want it, exactly when I want it. And if you are thinkin this bad-bass beach is gonna put up with your bullship any longer than I have to, you are sadly mistaken, my little electric eel.”

I glare at her, but it was weak. She could say a word and my own power would turn back on me, and then where would I be.

“Aww, poor unfortunate shoal. All the fight went right out of you, so fuckin quick.” And then she moved close, her cold hands on my face yet again. She smelled of salt and sea, and her voice sounded deep, like something about to snag you, pull you under. All that power, the power to conquer the world. And it was smiling at me, gentle as I’ve ever seen anyone be, even as her nails, her teeth, promised pain she doesn’t even technically have to lift a finger to deliver. “Good bouy…”

And then she kissed me.

And all my fight came right back, I snarled at her and bit as best I could, and she laughed her sea-deep laugh and let me. Toyed with me. She hurt me, she fucked me, and then she left. And when she left, no one came back. Not for a perigree, it was just me and the ship. The ship, the system that constantly invaded my pan, that I couldn’t turn off even if I did pass out. And then she came to see me again. smiling that same viciously kind smile.

So the perigrees, the sweeps, carried on, moving around me while I seemed to stall. She would visit me randomly, without warnings. Sometimes she would do nothing but hum old songs, older than anyone alive, and stroke my hair. Rub at my horns. Keep me company, acting pale as the stars we flew through. Other times, she would bite and claw and scar, fuck me hard and rough til I screamed for it to stop, til I screamed for more, pitch black. Occasionally, she’d come to just play with me, make me bleed, brand me, claim me.

Sometimes, how she talked to me, how she played with me... it almost seemed red.

And she made sure to limit my contact with anyone else. Anyone who came in was not supposed to talk to me, was just supposed to look over things. She was the only person who touched me, who treated me like a troll anymore.

At least, until more helmsmen started getting hooked up. Until real network of communications was made between the fleet. At first, it was just a way to relay messages between ships, but of course, considering the helmsmen are the ships, we all very quickly made a… semiprivate support group, so buried among the random coding and such that no one bothered to look for it. Of course, we made sure to never take up too much resources running the chat, and eventually we did get found out, when our messages started getting caught by spam filters and such.

There was a lengthy investigation to see if we were committing treason, and then a non-private chat room was made and every helmsman was told explicitly that we were to only use that, but that we wouldn’t get punished for anything we said.

Of course, that was a lie, and most of us knew it, and they knew we knew it, but even still we used it. Me most often. No other helmsman, I learned, had so little contact with the rest of their crew. No other helmsman dealt with the load I had to deal with, and with the concentration I had to show, to still keep perfectly on course even when she had her claws embedded in me.

At first everyone tried to pity me, to support me, but… It didn’t help, she’d taunt me with some of the logs sometimes, and very quickly I stopped responding to their kind words with anything but scorn, and the other helmsmen stopped talking to me as much for a while.

Even still… I lingered. I talked most. I supported them, when they thought they couldn’t go one more night, one more hour, one more fucking _second_ as they were just then. I think I channeled him when I did that, for all that his words were softer than mine could ever be. And soon, new helmsman came to me for support as well, and if I worked really hard on it, if my workload was a little less strenuous than usual, I could take some of the processing load off of their just-changed pans, help the ship run, maybe a little bit slower than it would have otherwise, but not any slower than any fucker who wasn’t a computer could really complain about..

All the while, as I helped new and old helmsmen alike, as the sweeps went by with me getting older, and then eventually with me not aging at all, (fuck her, fuck her, _fuck her why couldn’t she just let me DIE_ ), I got no help, virtually no contact besides her, besides them, and besides the mechanics that came to give me checkups every few perigrees.

And yet…

And yet, when they broke, I was there to watch. When the other helmsmen went insane with the strain of it all, when they began sending random nonsense text because they couldn’t think anything but data anymore, when they sobbed and railed and cried and said they couldn’t do it anymore (I watched the vids during those times, they always ended in mercy cullings and a new helmsman needing my help as I was trying to mourn the loss of the last), and somehow through it all, I stayed… Not sane. Not whole. But lucid, intact. Workable. And if sometimes I asked her to linger a little while, and if sometimes she obliged me with that deep, abrupt, bubbly laugh of hers, played with my hair a little longer, colored lips playing along my horn or my ears or my neck, well…

Well, honestly, I’m pretty fucking ashamed of that.

Even still, it made it so I was the longest lived helmsman, the only one not to go batshit crazy, lose myself in my own pan and either become brainless or dead. I became _The Helmsman_ , and I took no pride, this time, in the title. Way back when, when I called myself The Psionic, it was almost… Romantic, in a way. Traveling together with my friends, feeling important, changing the world. We all had our own titles, and we felt like heros.

It’s only just, I think, that my title got stripped, that I got a new one that made me cringe to be called. I couldn’t be Makena anymore, not among the younger helmsmen who looked up to me as something other than a number, something to aspire to, something to... hope for, a bit. Aspire to not becoming pandead or getting culled, even if it came at the cost of their soul. They… Were all so young. I didn’t ever expect to live so long, to feel _old_ , that’s not how being a lowblood is supposed to work, and they all felt so young, so new, so hopeful even in such a hopeless situation, and fuck if it didn't remind me of him. Honestly, I felt like I felt old long before she extended my life. Frankly, I didn’t know what the fuck I was talking about, but it felt like I had lived forever, and I'm sure some of the older helmsmen felt the same, looked down on the newer with some strange degree of fondness and nostalgia. 

After she kissed me and I felt new life flow through me, I was so certain I would actually live forever, and even more certain that I’d rather die, for real that time.

That was one of the few times I really broke down for her, begged her to kill me until my throat was raw, begged her to just let me die on my own, and she met my begging with soft words that filled me with the hope that maybe, _maybe_  she would end it.

After that, a new feature was added to the punishment system.

If I begged for death, I would get shocked.

* * *

By now, I have learned to only hope for death, never actually say anything about it. Not to her, not to those trolls who look up to me, not to anyone. No one can know how broken I am, and by keeping all the cracks in my thinkpan hidden, some nights I manage to convince myself that I am whole, that I do not need her, that I still believe what he told me. That all trolls are equal, there will be peace, those above will care for those below.

But… as the life slips from me, I can fucking feel it, I know it’s coming and I accept it eagerly. As my blood drips on the floor, as I think over my life, I find myself content with being his accessory, his bodyguard, confidant, his pale. And then only afterwards being a toy, and a spare part.

… I still have a little life left in me though.

I pull the troll part and the data part of me together one last time, the diagnostic sensors still blaring at me that I’m dying, 4%, and declining.

My sensors still pick up life on the ship, still pick up her form in the control room. Right in front of the monitor. Perfect. For a moment, my programming doesn’t let me work through all of the shit I need to hack the firewalls, bug up the systems, get us slowing as she drains the last of my energy in the attempt to make us go faster. But the punishment it offers is one I’m willing to accept, so I fight through that shit anyway.

And then, with the speed only a computer can manage, I lovingly render my single bulge in mustard yellow ascii text art (she bit one off after I told her to eat bulge one time, I did not make that mistake again), and under it I type, in huge font:

“FUCK Y0U, F15H B17CH”

Okay. _Now,_ I’m ready to die.

**Author's Note:**

> I had a ton of fun writing this, even if it made me bang my head against the wall. 
> 
> Might end up adding chapters later, might not, but I think I left it at a pretty good stopping point where it was.


End file.
